Guest Post: If You Want More Jobs, Look To Steve Jobs

You’ve undoubtedly heard by now that Steve Jobs passed away yesterday after a long battle with cancer; it’s been all over the news with wall-to-wall coverage, and iCandle vigils have sprung up all over the world. Jobs is being remembered as a pioneer, a technological revolutionary, a visionary. Rightfully so.

But it’s important to give credit where credit is due, and the world owes a tremendous debt to Steve Jobs for something else. He was perhaps the greatest living example of ‘philanthropy’ in action.

While people like Warren Buffet are pleading with the government to raise their taxes and give away their wealth to sycophantic bureaucrats, Jobs showed time and time again that the best way to improve people’s lives is to create value and be productive.

Steve Jobs was one of the most productive human beings to have ever lived; he started several successful companies which directly employed tens of thousands of people. Indirectly, his businesses improved the livelihoods of millions across the globe, from Chinese factory workers to iPhone app programmers to Apple shareholders.

In building an empire and unimaginable wealth for himself, Steve Jobs enriched the lives and livelihoods of others by creating value. Not by forced redistribution. Not by giving things away. By creating value.

Ironically, just as I write this I am watching President Obama on Bloomberg Television trying to explain how many jobs his new plan will create– 1.9 million in his estimate:

“We’re just going to keep on going at it and hammering away… until… something gets done. I would love to see nothing more than Congres act… so aggressively.”

Politicians would do themselves and their constituents a great service by comparing their own track record for enriching people’s lives against Steve Jobs’ performance, and then kindly stepping out of the way. The path to prosperity is not paved in votes, but rather in freedom: the freedom to create, produce, risk work hard… and be rewarded for your efforts.

If you have the time, I’d encourage you to take a few minutes and read some of Jobs’ own words; there are boundless sources online that will praise his creativity, drive, and intellect, but perhaps no one is better suited to explain Steve Jobs than the man himself.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma– which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Jobs on change and politics:

“We’re making the largest investment of capital that humankind has ever made in weapons over the next five years. We have decided, as a society, that that’s where we should put our money, and that raises the deficits and, thus, the cost of our capital.”

“I think it takes a crisis for something to occur in America. And I believe there’s going to be a crisis of significant proportions in the early Nineties as these problems our political leaders should have been addressing boil up to the surface.”

Jobs on charity… and the importance of failure:

“And that’s the problem with most philanthropy– there’s no measurement system. You give somebody some money to do something and most of the time you can really never measure whether you failed or succeeded in your judgment of that person or his ideas or their implementation. So if you can’t succeed or fail, it’s really hard to get better.”

Jobs on careers:

“Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. . . As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. . . So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”

Jobs on making it count:

Most of the time, we’re taking things. Neither you nor I made the clothes we wear; we don’t make the food or grow the foods we eat; we use a language that was developed by other people; we use another society’s mathematics. Very rarely do we get a chance to put something back into that pool. I think we have that opportunity now. And no, we don’t know where it will lead. We just know there’s something much bigger than any of us here.

Jobs on [the blue screen of] death:

“[D]eath is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”

Yeah, sorry Simon. Do not agree. He didn't make life better for everyone. Everyone keeps reusing the quote about not believing in a dogma, but what is Apple itself? A brand loyally followed by the 'in crowd' that believes true wealth is debt and ipads.

steve jobs lived in a time when corporations did NOT engage in massive anti-competitive practices like patent abuse, to kill all competition. the 'internet' was not copyrighted, apple/microsoft was not sued for taking ideas from xerox os/unix commandline os, and there were no patent wars between apple and samsung. steve lived in a time when apple didn't try to control every aspect of the user experience, when the youth of their generation had great mobility to freely innovate, there were no leveraged buyouts to rob genius creations from their creators, so anyone could start a business from their garage without the support of VC.

fast forward 35 years, what steve did is just not possible in the world we live in today.

Simon Black is charlatan who is programmed to free sheeple from its cash.

Steve Jobs is indeed great entrepreneur and I agree with everything that is said in the article about him. Those whining idiots who mostly posted in this thread are just jerks and unproductive mediocraties who would like to explore and steal other people ideas but uncapable of anything meaningful. Therefore, they are reduced to posting on this website complaining about bangsters, corporations, Jews, Marksists, Ive League schools etc etc which makes their life difficult (or so they like to think). What makes their life difficult is their own worthlessness, lazyness and idiocy.

But make no mistake: charlatans like Simon Black are not here to create value or do anything useful for that matter. No I would ever believe that jerks like him are capable of making any money: his travel is probably sponsored by some wealthy idiots around whom he likes to hang out. The very same idiots fund all his so called "projects" (like bunkers in Chile) which make absolutely no sense whatsoever.

you cab't blame someone for creating something so mesmerizing that a cult develops around it. The human capacity for cultishness is not Jobs's creation nor his problem. He created amazing things and people tripped over themselves to have them.

I can't believe all the hatred and animosity directed toward Steve Jobs around here. For a website that fights the status quo, I'd think Steve Jobs would be a hero amongst you guys. Whether you like his products or not, whether you think Apple cultists are consumer zombies or not, one cannot argue that Steve Jobs changed the fucking world. What have YOU done lately? The guy dropped out of college, started Apple from his garage, resurrected it from bankruptcy and, in short order, created the most valuable company on Earth. He's the most anti-status quo of any CEO in modern business. That alone, should command your respects.

There is a core group of ZH'ers that just fucking hates everything, and it's pathetic.

Most of ZH disagrees with central planning. Apple is probably the most secretive and authoritarian central planner of the IT industry. Jobs created some great things, but the way they were implemented were anathema to the founding spirit of the Internet, which believes in free and equal access for all. Jobs was the quintessential late Boomer; idealistic and creative as a youth, a tyrant in mid-life. Like the rest of the Boomers Jobs was always convinced of the superiority of his vision, and once he had the power to implement it he did so without compassion and a "ends justifies the means" mentality.

I would say that most ZH readers view Jobs as I do; with a certain respect for his innovations and accomplishments and an absolute dismay for most of the results.

Oh no he just worked the arbitrage. He made life much better for his customers. He treated them like kings and queens. He just had to fuck over labor like a crazy to do it. Make no mistake about it. Apple customer service is excellent. Make no mistake about it either. Working in one of his mob ruled sweatshop plants is tragic as fuck.

The thing is the hidden intel connection. When apple dumped their old processor for Intel. They got in bed. Foxconn is pretty much Intel's suicide hotline mess on steroids. Apple just helped make it work. In exchange apple lied their asses off about intel processor sales and helped make intel's book fudging look legitimate. By the time the entire fucking truth about those two comes out in not just india but china and taiwan both those companies will have shell game 14 companies deep to stay in the market.

Apple's sandy bridge sales figures are just fucking hilarious. Even with the big chipset boner. They still got in there and lied their fucking ass off.

Sick of that fucking stat. Guess what genius do some homework. There are 1 Million workers at Foxconn...that means that they killed themselves at the rate 1.4 per 100,000 workers. In college the suicide stat runs 7.5 suicides per 100,000 students each year. If suicides are such a concern, you should probably hop off of ZH and find a college blog and start your campaign there.

Do you know what it is at Sony, Japan or China? Do you know what it is at Toyota, Japan or China or the USA? Do you know what it is for all of China? How about Samsung? GE China? The Zerohedge readership?

Exactly. How could ANYONE be crazy enough to celebrate the business model of this Capitilist Monster who was willing and eager to send his countries money away to support slave labour compounds in China. The complete lack of rational thought is astonishing. Of course, I suppose 60% of the readership have no idea that I-junk is made in China.

I guess we should bring all those jobs back to our hypocritical union workers so we can pay for Soviet quality engineering at 10 times the cost we pay now. As long as taxes remain as high and the central planners interfere in the markets on a daily basis labor will NEVER come back to America.

Actual taxes paid by large companies in the United States are at generational lows as a percentage of earnings, ffart. The argument to the contrary is pure propaganda, but nice job repeating it for your corporate masters.

Really? I can think of many forms that are worse, from foreclosing banks to mass murdering chemical companies, to fascist mercinary contractors. What bad did Apple ever do, other than employ a few children (ie keeping them from starving or prostituting themselves).

Stop the bullshit. Steve Jobs was brilliant. Chinese commie capitalist manufacturing - Foxconn - is half of the story. Mr. Bullshit artist with a forum in which to bullshit plays political demagogue with Mr. Jobs. what a jerk.

Jobs was blindly followed by a bunch of 20 and 30-something hipsters that have no clue what real wealth, or truth for that matter, even is. Yes, he was an innovator but there were many of those that changed society, and not always for the better...

He has freed me from having to deal with constant crashes, bug fixes, viruses, etc that are constant on Windows machines. That, times the number of people who own Macs, ads up to a shitload of saved effort, which can thus be redirected to other useful ends.

Wait, you avoided those things by using Macs? Man, my power PC (from parents), Cube (from PI), and some other crappy thing with OSX all had crashes and bugs. My PC which I built and clean installed 7 on has yet to crash once and it does everything fast. And I hate MS! Go figure! Oh but don't forget how useful iTunes is! Yeah, another update! Oh, yeah! All my mp3s have been scrambled to protect a bunch of piles of doodoo in the music industry! Yeah! Awesome! Oh, hey, my iPod's battery crapped out. Awesome! Just like every other Apple product, throw it away and buy a new one! Oh noes! The new one has a bad ear plug jack! That's understandible considering a paid a couple hundred bucks for this tiny POS! Guess I'll get another one! Hey, another update since I started typing! AWESOME! I LOVE APPLE AND JOBS! Boohoo, no more being Jobbed by iHoles! Come back!

As Denninger so rightly says, Steve Jobs was a thief of livers, and never did anything productive for the world. He just sold over-priced crAAPLe consumer products to "mouth-breathers" and was also a traitor for not building the product in the US. Which is why I followed Denninger's advice and bought a Lenovo laptop instead, delivered directly from China.

I personally think that Jobs was neither Saint nor Demon. He had amazing business acumen, and was an innovator and a phenomenal marketer. However, some of his personal characteristics were perhaps not so great as well. I was sad to see him pass, and I wish his soul or whatever well.

He did create some very high paying jobs in America. but he also created some near-slave labor jobs. Should those just be excused?

I hardly see decrying slave labor the same as being pro-wealth re-distrution. There was NEVER a need for him to use near slave-labor. The markup on Apple products was and is astronomical. They have more cash LITERALLY than they know what to do with. So why did he squeeze those people so hard? What was the purpose?

He couldn't have raised the price of an iPhone by $1 and forwarded it to the workers who make his machines ? He couldn't have dropped his revenue by $1 per iPod to improve the lives of his employees, to make their living condition SAFE?

Should we worship a man who amassed $40 BILLION in cash on the backs of slave labor, when he knew it was happening? Is that what we should STRIVE for? A bunch of amazing intelligent driven men who are also megalomaniacs who will crush their workerst as much as possible in order to eek out 1 more dollar in profit to sit in a bank somewhere?

Again, I'm not talking redistribution. I'm talking about SHARING profits with YOUR OWN WORKERS who HELP YOU make the product. Without workers there is no Apple. Why must we constantly redistribute all money towards the owners of capital, in preference OVER labor? Why is capital taxed at 15% and labor at a higher %%...

anyway... steve jobs embodies both sides of a coin. That a driven and intelligent person can spread joy and complete awesome and amazing feats, but also possible misery and social costs as well.

You make the mistake of presuming that there should be only two options in this world: 1) poverty and starvation, or 2) working for a globalist slave shop earning just enough to survive because you're "better off." Option one is largely caused by the brutal tactics of those who push option 2. I'll bet you wouldn't consider yourself better off working 16 hour days making just enough to eat. But that's because you live in a society with labor laws. Nice how you get to take that for granted, isn't it?

Good to find you here, BigJim, despite our mini-battle that I attribute to trying to figure out everyone's intent or message while scrolling through a 700 comment thread. Despite my "sanctimony", I don't think we are so far apart.

I'll add to the point you are making here....it is not possible to avoid being a part of someone's abuse in this world. Shop at Walmart, go running in anybody's sneakers, eat a grapefruit, fill your car with Saudi oil, turn on any electronic appliance...can't be done. We all like easy answers, especially when they cost us nothing. Somebody miffed at the Foxconn suicide rate can buy Dell, where the pathway back to an abused workforce is less clearly defined and the suicide rate not broadcasted. Of course, if there is a cost to our "concern", then we rationalize. Example: Saudi Arabia is an oppressive monarchy that denies women virtually every right given to men---a list which is still short---prohibits under penalty of death by public beheading the practice of any faith that is not Islam, but is the second largest exporter of crude oil. We all use it, or support their system indirectly by our crude oil usage. We can't avoid it, since none of us always travels by foot, heats and cools his home naturally, or uses no plastic or fertilizer.

Somehow the 1.4/100000 suicide rate at Foxconn became the world's worst crime, even though that rate is less than Chinese society on the whole, and less than Sony or Toyota (Japan's overall suicide rate is 21x that of Foxconn employees), or even the US Post Office. Though I don't have numbers, I bet it is higher at Starbucks, since the employee demographic is heavily weighted toward the peak suicide years. Even a single suicide is too much, but many are unavoidable. As you pointed out in the other thread, anyone who is unhappy with someone else's lot in life can take money out of his own pocket and try to make that life better. We can also try to avoid adding to someone's misery, but if doing so we should be consistent, rather than selective as so many are if Steve Jobs is involved.

Are you going to say you've never bought a product, or had a product given to you manufactured by so-called slave labor? Are you trying to say that you are a minimalist, that you have nothing that was manufactured in China, no clothes, no sneakers, no electronics, like a computer, no clell phone, no nothing?

Don't try to tell us that you don't use any products manufactured by slave labor, such as in your car, or any household appliances. In fact when you go home tonight look all around your cave and check out just how much you have contributed to the slave labor problem in China. Believe me, you have nothing to fell high and mighty about, because you're just as guilty as Steve Jobs. Your only problem is that you don't have billions in the bank.

Believe me, you have nothing to fell high and mighty about, because you're just as guilty as Steve Jobs

I think I made it quite clear in my post above that I don't vilify Steve Jobs, and thus I have no problem being placed into a category with him.

However, I will point out a few facts

1) I'm not sure that I'd say it's the same to knowingly put people in near slave labor types of conditions, and to unknowingly buy products from those manufacturers. I actually never buy products from places that do near slave labor types of practices. (for instance, I never ever go to Walmart).

2) it is very hard these days to buy fair trade products. Partly due to cost, but partly because the "race to the bottom" by so many of our corporate elite have made it difficult to even FIND products that are labor friendly

3) that said, I do TRY to do my part. As much as possible I buy local and I shun consumerism. I avoid big corporations, big agriculture and big business if possible. But I, like Steve Jobs, am not perfect. I ride my bike to work most days (American made), but I also have a Japanese SUV (Lexus) that mainly sits in my Garage. Although I've never bought an Apple product, I've gotten them as gifts and my spouse loves the iPhone, MacBook, and iPod. I almost never shop, but I got a Nook and it's my favorite piece of technology ever, and I don't know BN's labor policies.

4) do I fail at my above principles from time to time? Of course. but nobody is telling me that I am the perfect vision of a future America either. (at least not that I know about)

5) I understand the fact that for some people near slave-labor is better than no labor. But that still doesn't mean that we should STRIVE to have more people in near-slave labor. Like I said... I have ambivalent feelings.

Thus, I stand by my claim. Steve Jobs was human, like the rest of us. He was a visionary in terms of marketing and product development, and he was an exceptionally hard worker and a driven human being. However, as a human, he had some major drawbacks including being a megalomaniac (which he likely deserved to be) and supporting terrible labor practices. That is his asterix, and your ad-hominem attack of me doesn't address this.

Thus, before I deify him and his actions as being a blueprint for future America, I must look at him in sum, and I have decided that I reject his anti-labor stance. I believe that the future way forward is to achieve more balance between labor and capital, because the pro-capital agenda we've done since Reaganomics is failing us as a society.

And no, this does not mean that I like Obama. I've said many times here that I hate Obama with a passion as he is the Trojan Horse president, doing things as a pseudo-liberal that no Republican could ever do

They have such contempt for the peasants that they lose sight of the fact that there is a societal breaking point where the peasants band together and assert power in numbers. The developed world has worked because the average guy feels like he has a chance to live in the house on the hill some day. It doesn't really cost that much to keep the dream alive: decent public schools, infrastructure, college education without a six figure debt, available and reasonably affordable health care, and other things that are all disappearing from the U.S. For whatever reason, history repeats and the haves (once they get theirs) always seem to devolve into a culture of "I earned it and you can just go eat cake."

If you don't like Steve Jobs, there is message in the technology itself.

All technology is an espect of fire. Fire was the first thing we mastered, fire is behind it all, fire moves it all forward. But fire is just change, it alters all things it touches. Most technology is a means of managing fire and light, heat and combustion, and all the trapped electrons trying to find a way out to fry us. And so most technology is about managing change itself.

Yeah, I'm into fire. Sosume.

And that's why everything has to burn, you see. That's the kind of technology we need to apply to this set of problems. Fire is the ultimate app. iFire. iBurn. iImmolation. Getting back to the basics, you know?

Steve let us play with fire in new ways. But really, he probably just wanted certain things to burn the fuck up and die.

What a cop out on philanthropy. "I'm not going to give because I don't know if my giving will pay any dividends, so I'm going to keep all the money for myself." At least more so called evil people like Bill Gates try to make a difference. And at least so called more evil corporations like XOM and GS try to give towared philanthropic causes.

Bill Gates already made a difference. So did Jobs. That's how they got their money. What they choose to do with it afterwards is their business. They shouldn't be villified for choosing to use their money to continue to invest or innovate instead of writing a check to XYZ foundation. Perhaps the increased investment that they fund leads to the technology that enables XYZ foundation to finally breakthrough and conquer whatever it was trying to conquer. You never know.

It's the cunts like GS who should be villified for not giving their money away because the got it almost solely from being in league with the State, who protected and backed their interest time after time. Jobs and Gates would be nowhere if they weren't offering something that people thought would benefit them. You can hate the stuff they came up with, but clearly millions of people saw some benefit to purchasing that stuff so they did. Nobody forced anyone to buy anything from those guys. We are forced to live with GS because they pay off the right people and therefore maintain their status at the top of the pile as the competition is regulated and taxed out of existence. Megacorps that operate in this fashion are hardly more respectable than people like Jobs.

Typical Bill Gates "philanthropy": no-whites-need-apply scholarships. And his tax-dodge "foundation", which funds a thousand other Left-wing subversions? That's how Gates dodged away from the anti-trust move the Clintonite Jews put on him. Just pitiful, how EZ it is to herd the goyim around.

I respect all the things mentioned about Jobs in this article, but its true Apple wasn't and isn't perfect.

But I don't exactly blame Apple for chasing profits. Wasn't it the US and other foreign governments who are at fault for establishing the trade agreements that make it far more profitable to give jobs at slave labor wages in China rather than at humane living wages in America?

And also isn't it the corporate mission to guarantee a mission to chase profits? As it stands Apple does about as much good for society as a big corporation could considering the framework they're operating within.

Apple products don't only sell based on 'groupthink' as many people like to claim. In reality Apple computers have enabled tons of people to have access to computer technology and all the ease of use innovations the Mac OS has given to consumers for decades. As an Apple user since the early 90s, I can attest to that.

Jobs thing is W--A---Y over the top. When the financial system finally crumbles into dust, I can't wait to see all those Apple lovers eating their iPhones. Yeah, let's see what the Jobs name means in 50 years?

I'm waiting with baited breath for all the geniuses here today who have displayed their talent for character assassination and disrespect for the dead to huddle together in some garage (or street protest?!?) and lay down tracks for the new Made In Merika by Merikan labor operating system and/or hardware device that's going to blow the competition out of the water and create thousands of high paying JOBS that will justify their existence as heretofore sniping cowards and blowhards who blame their envy and malice on the capricious success of their betters.

Thanks Simon, for ending this day of complete infamy on ZH with a touch of class. But as Jobs and yourself surely learned already, no good deed will go unpunished!

I hesitate to elevate Jobs to the god-like stature that everyone seems to be doing right now. He was an entrepeneur who was at the right place at the right time. He, like Gates, found products at behemouth companies that had no value to the original inventors (the GUI/mouse idea from Xerox, or the PC architecture from IBM) and ran with them to create multi-billion dollar enterprises. Sure, he made mistakes, like the LISA, and he failed to see the importance of allowing his products to interface with Microsoft's products until Apple was down to less than ten percent of the PC market, thus freezing Apple out of the business office market. He made up for it wiith the iPad/Phone/etc line of products, even if they are made in China.

God-like? No. Visionary? Sure. Savvy businessman? Absolutely.

Now ask yourself a serious question: who is better able to lead this country out of the economic calamity we are mired in right now? A bunch of Jobs-like businessmen who know what it is to go out onto a limb to create a brand and a business that employs millions and creates value? Or a bunch of Geithner/Obama/banker types, who have never created anything in their lives, relying on the gubbmint for everything?

Jobs/Gates/Winn/Welch need the Geithner/Obama/Bankers to create things like NAFTA and "china/india globalisation" so that they ship jobs overseas creating wonderful "opportunities" in slave labour camps at a few dollars a day and can themselves end up billionaires. All the while at home the middle class total wealth continues to deteroriate. This was papered over for a time with increased borrowing.

I have no problem with the products, technology and innovation. I do have issue with IP being used as a way of creating monopoly and the thought that "we are all better off" as a result of Jobs having lived.

I can't believe some of you clowns. Monday morning quarterbacking as per your pathetic regular routines. You actually believe that if your circumstances were different, and that you were in the right place at the right time, you could have proven yourself a better man than Jobs. What a laughable assertion. You folks are delusional. Great men don't rely on someone else to make themselves great. They generally make their own opportunities, even 'creating' their own luck, if you will. And great men certainly don't spend a lot of time on websites bashing those who've made this world a better place to live. You want to be somebody?....then shut the fuck up and get out there and prove yourself worthy.

Only a complete idiot would spend any time typing out words on this website. Ah wait, I mean.... Putting that aside, might it occur to you that people can respect the man's genius but also see that he also represents much of what is wrong with the pure capitalist system (the need to make not just a healthy profit, but an obscene profit at the expense of the well-being of the average laborer)?

One quibble--Since Apple has never given a dime to investors, rather than say "Jobs has improved the livelihoods of shareholders" I think you should say he has improved the lives of ex-shareholders. You don't make squat until you sell.

…the world owes a tremendous debt to Steve Jobs for something else. He was perhaps the greatest living example of ‘philanthropy’ in action. – Simon Black

The operative word here is “world.”And America’s debt to Steve Jobs is considerably less.For Steve Jobs was a globalist at a time when America needed freedom, not slavery to a banking cartel who would use the world’s resources and labor for their own personal benefit and turn their backs on the founding principles of a society with the protections of law, equality and representative government.

It staggers the imagination to realize what influence Steve Jobs could have had in a clarion call for personal liberty and individual freedom and didn’t use. Instead, he used a brilliant technical mind and a unique business discipline to take advantage of the fruits grown from free enterprise by others in the soil of freedom, gave a little back, and then opted for Big Government and cooperation with totalitarian rulers like China.

At a time when a patriot was needed, Steve Jobs was an Establishment player.

I see. And in that Jobs was a Buddhist and I gather believed in karma, i.e., that whatever good or bad you do in this life comes back to you, you don’t suppose that the wages he and other U.S. companies bartered with the Chinese Communists to pay Chinese laborers,will come back to him in a good paying assembly job and he’ll be making iPads in Shenzhen…do you?

As far as working conditions, both of the heavily guarded factory plants in Shenzhen's Longhua and Guanlan districts “comprise several bunker-like, six-storey factory blocks that are protected by several layers of electronic security, through which workers flow continually night and day.”

And according to the Daily Mail, “In the towns outside the factory complexes that contain the dormitory blocks, teams of Foxconn security guards patrol on motorbikes and on foot, armed with 3ft-long batons.”

Apple is the world's largest company, bragging on the millionaires it’s created because those young girls over there are desperate for their livelihoods and will work under difficult conditions. One of the reasons Apple’s over there is because these people don’t have freedom or a union or a representative government, you don’t have to fight the competition or that bargaining stuff. THAT’S why it’s cheaper. And you can’t kid me; if Apple can find another Third World Country where the workers make 10 cent an hour, the stockholders would love it. Apple would go up a little more!

the random quality of the articles on zerohedge just blws me away. you have ground breaking info on HFT AND POMO GAMES yet we have an article that claims steve jobs created jobs....well i guess he did but IN F&CKING CHINA....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But I would expect that Warren Buffet has created/sustained ten times the number of jobs as Apple. It's intellectually dishonest to repeat the soundbite about Buffett wanting his taxes raised. FFS, he and others are wanting TAX REFORM to, among other things, reduce the tax rate disparity between those who make their income from 1099's (i.e. lower-tax capital gains) and those who get a W2.

No one can take away Woz's accomplishments. But he also decided long ago that he didn't want to play any more. (Rock on dude, I'd have probably done the same with a few million.) Jobs kept going, and did it a again. And again. And again....

Say what you want. Bullshit all you want. Find me another that has done what Jobs has done in this century. Sure he created jobs in China, but so what. You have to produce products that one can afford. Agree, labor at $5.00 a day is not something to be proud of. But, he created many jobs there and here. What the hell is this administrations doing to create jobs, or anything. Spending money we do not have. A burden on our children. A bunch of idiots running around yelling at each other, getting nothing done, killing Americans in stupid wars that never should have been started.

Jobs gave the world so much, if you build something revolutionary and they like it and buy it, then you are successful. Those here that ridicule the man and what he accomplished are the ones that will bitch no matter what is said. And towards the end, look at how he acted. Look at how he ended his life. The dignity, the quiet demeanor, the grace. You guys that ridicule Steve Jobs are a sad lot. I feel sorry for the lot of you.

We should be very clear:Steve Jobs has perfected the approach to sell overpriced gadgets to people with (seemingly) too much money. He was very successful, and I give props where due.But such an approach helps little to solve real world problems.

To play a violin, as a virtuoso, it requires/demands great internal and external discipline and order ... and natural talent.

To walk on the moon requires the same ... but of a very large group ... and a few guys who know they will likely die trying but are willing to do it anyway.

They are trained (by a military flight career) in deep discipline, procedures and orderly action and timely reaction.

This works to attain high goals. Without it, you get nothing, but with it, you can achieve a great deal, very fast.

Our whole global society is a trade-off between deep discipline and necessary order and the personal and group freedom from its oppressing and exploitative downsides (TAX, thug-police, corrupt courts, and klepto-parasite politicians, sicko-warped media, and criminal corporate scumbags in suits, dropping LGB bombs on brownies).

Steve Jobs tried (fairly successfully) to balance the need for deep discipline and order, plus dedication and development, with the maximum degree of 'freedom' that was still fully functional, remained effective, and allowed the enjoyment of life.

Clearly a lot of people think he got it about 'right'.

Though I can understand why many think he was a tragic disaster that alienated, fleeced and enslaved people with a ruse and promise of connecting them to a better state of being and satisfaction.

Even if Jobs was not actually personally responsible for much - even then - the fact would remain that other company's techie-creators always knew that Apple was out there and that they WOULD pounce and gut them, if given an opportunity to do so. This pressure to perform, at an acceptably comparable innovative level, kept them pushing forwards. It was a real competition of ideas.

And these are necessary - essential.

I don't care what value judgements people want to make about Apple, the company, or Jobs, the man, or the 'blame' they want to pin to either, and I don't give a fuck about iPADS, AND ALL THAT STUPID SHINY PLASTIC CRAP.

The REAL question is; did Jobs and Apple and Co., make human opportunities and human potential, increase or decrease?

Clearly, it's increased - massively!

But would it have increased - anyway - minus Steve Jobs, and Apple's' contributions, or it's existence?

Yes, of course it would have! It just may have taken longer, but required less hype, vision-thang bullshit, and more wage-slavery to get to this point.

Anarchists, the tacklessly wilful and whiners are generally not violin virtuosos, nor do they have what it takes to walk on the moon., nor to fix what they have broken, not to increase human opportunities and potential, nor to grow real investments.

They do not have, "The Right Stuff".

Steve Jobs had the right stuff.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own anthing Apple, and feel their stuff is WAY overpriced, over-rated, not compelling, and non-essential.